


Zu Herzen Gehn (From Heart to Heart)

by ifrainfalls



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: 1950s, Gen, How Do I Tag, Human & Country Names Used (Hetalia), Musical References, Piano, Platonic Relationships, Soviet Union
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-29 06:04:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17802434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ifrainfalls/pseuds/ifrainfalls
Summary: Prussia finds an old piano in the Soviet house and learns a little more about Belarus.





	Zu Herzen Gehn (From Heart to Heart)

**Author's Note:**

> hi it's alexa i wrote this and i have a lot of feelings about belarus

Gilbert hadn’t been aware that there was a piano in the back room of the Soviet house.  He had been here for --what-- 10 years now, but the piano had been covered in books and baskets of papers since his arrival.  It was still covered in dust, for that matter, like nobody had paid it much attention in years, if not decades.

He glanced around.  It was rare that he would be left to wander during the afternoon.  Usually Ivan or Uzbekistan would have something for him to do even if it wasn’t his official business, but they were both out of the house right now, like most of the others for that matter.  Gingerly, Gilbert lifted the lid on the piano and wiped some of the dust off the keys. It looked functional, as far as Gilbert knew about piano maintenance. He started to plonk out a few measures of off-key Beethoven.

Although Gilbert was far from a maestro, he had picked a few things up from when Ludwig was young and another brother had insisted on giving him musical education as he grew.  Gilbert couldn’t remember which brother it was now. Funny how that worked.

Eventually, he ran out of music that he remembered clearly and Gilbert moved to close the piano, interrupted by the sound of rustling behind him.  He glanced up to catch Belarus watching him keanly from the doorway. The first thing that came to mind was to make excuses, but something stopped him.  Belarus, like several of the others, made it their business to near-completely ignore him. He was fine with that- understood it even. When you hadn’t fought as much as Gilbert had, every war seemed like the end of the world.  It was just that Gilbert had seen conflict from birth to apparent death. He couldn’t be bothered to hate over it as much anymore.

“Are you going to keep playing?” there was a crease to her brow now.

Gilbert opened his mouth to say no, but something stopped him.  He hadn’t seen Belarus so interested before. Normally there was something about her that suggested that her head was somewhere else entirely, but the way she looked at him was almost startlingly present.

Before he could think of a better response, Belarus walked in and sat down next to him on the piano bench.  She shot him a glance that spoke of something Gilbert knew well from when Ludwig been young- mischief. ‘If you won’t tell Hesse I won’t either.’

Belarus’s fingers were far more nimble than his, and it took him a moment after she started playing to realize what the composition was.  Debussy. Deux Arabesques. Without commenting, he simply watched her fingers dance across the keys. He realized that he hadn’t really listened to music, not since coming here.  Occasionally Ivan would leave the radio on in his office, but it wasn’t really the same as what he had done before. There was new music, simple and about class struggle, which Gilbert thought was particularly uninspired.

“It’s been a while,” she commented eventually, towards the end of the piece.

“Huh?” he responded, jerked out of his thoughts.

The music paused for a moment before Belarus returned to playing.  “I wouldn’t give up playing for anything else, but… the old music hurts Vanya so much.”

Hurt him, Gilbert wondered.  Why would Ivan of all people be touchy about piano music? “How long has it been since you played?”  He asked instead.

Her playing grew soft at that.  “Perhaps… since the 1900s, I don’t remember the exact date.  Before that I would play for the tsars and their families in private on occasion.”

Well, that answered many of Gilbert’s questions.  Everyone knew that whatever had happened to their last tsar and his family, it hadn't been pleasant.  

The arabesque came to a slow end and Belarus started another.  “Vanya doesn’t like to think of what he left behind,” she continued unbidden.  “So I stopped.” The piano began to pick up, a more dramatic tune this time.

Gilbert supposed they were all somewhat worse for wear now in their own way.  Ivan always bore his troubles on his shoulders, Belarus had cut her hair short after it burnt, and he himself had fresh scars littering his back and chest.  They all wore gloomy faces far more than they had 200 years ago.

Belarus was a bit of a strange one.  He had met her briefly before the USSR, as part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and she had always seemed reserved, but she was polite.  Smiled when Lithuania and Poland smiled. If anything, they had been her family as much as Russia was, he supposed. The Belarus of now was a very different beast, even when she was talking to Ivan or Uzbekistan.

“Are you going to stare at me or play?” Belarus’s eyes were fully on him now, the piano having stopped completely.

He wasn’t aware that Belarus cared whether he stared or not.  “Give me a moment,” he replied, cracking his knuckles before starting to slowly tap out some half remembered fragment of Bach.  Ludwig had always had more of a talent for it than he had. Granted, Ludwig took after Roderich more in temperment, so perhaps it wasn’t a surprise.

“Your hands are too stiff,” she replied, placing her hands on his.  “Like this.” Apparently she knew Bach as well, better than he did. It was the first time, Gilbert realized, someone had bothered to touch him in a long while.  Even longer when you considered it was with kind intent.

They played for what seemed like hours but couldn’t have been more than forty minutes before the front door slammed open and Belarus hurriedly stood, slamming shut the piano cover as soon as Gilbert’s hands were out of the way.  “You should go,” she said. “Before somebody finds us.”

Gilbert nodded, and before he could answer, she was gone, leaving him wondering whether he had dreamt it all up in the first place.


End file.
